SQUENCHED AVACAUSAGE [Boom, v0.4, MAP01-MAP13]

[Fernito]

2 hours ago, nova++ said:

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Yes, you are supposed to trap them. It's not really RNG-heavy, if you hang out near the control switches they can't get to you and will run right into the capture area.

Spoiler

Aha, I see! I'm sorry I missed it, it must have been very painful and frustrating to watch me doing that :P

 

 

FDA Map05 and 06:
 

Spoiler

 

I really liked the concept and all those small details like the hamburgers you can "eat" hehe. I got a bit lost at some point, but not in a bad way. It's super fun to play, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Map05, just like Map02, a very cool "ambience" map (is there a technical term for this kind of maps without monsters?).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 6, 2022 by Fernito

[nova++]

MAP04 continues to be an oddball for me... my excuse is that I was spaced out super hard from my first covid vaccine and was barely occupying planet earth, hence the... styling

 

Also I cant believe I missed this texture

Edited September 6, 2022 by nova++

[Fernito]

19 hours ago, nova++ said:

MAP04 continues to be an oddball for me... my excuse is that I was spaced out super hard from my first covid vaccine and was barely occupying planet earth, hence the... styling

 

haha, yeah, I also got the impression that it's a little bit "weak" compared to the other maps of the set, it'd be nice to put a little bit more love into it. It's a great map nonetheless.

 

Here's my FDA of MAP07:

Spoiler

Another great map, loved the ambientation (is that an actual word?), specially the little hut at the beginning. I spent some time trying to hit the eye in the red key room thinking it was a secret lol, just ignore that part. I played the map again afterwards and found both secrets, but I didn't record it.

 

Oh, and sorry about the unnecessary weapon juggling and the stupid mistakes, played it right after waking up haha

 

as

 

FDA of MAP08:

Spoiler

One of the most challenging so far along with MAP01. Great map as usual, I really liked the attention to detail, the silver skull being cast was super cool, the moving lava bridge was also nice. I couldn't find a single secret :( 

 

Sorry for the rather bad playing, I was quite unfocused towards the end. 

 

 

Edited September 7, 2022 by Fernito

[nova++]

I'm impressed you managed to go through MAP07 without ever using the Heal-Mat. Sorry the secrets have been giving you trouble - I know everyone is a bit different in how they look for them, and sometimes different ways of hiding them don't line up. I have that trouble with some maps, too. And MAP08 gives me trouble too, it's definitely one of the harder ones.

 

It's entirely likely I will go back and significantly revise MAP04 sometime, I like bits and pieces of it but the whole just doesnt quite come together for me...

Edited September 7, 2022 by nova++

[Fernito]

2 hours ago, nova++ said:

Sorry the secrets have been giving you trouble

Don't be! When the wad is good, hard-to-find secrets add more replay value IMO :) 

 

FDA MAP09:

Spoiler

The ending sequence was great! :D I enjoyed this map a lot, cool and creative concept, quite some action but not too overwhelming. I also had a good laugh a couple of times ("braintenance" lol). Again, I didn't find any secret. I'll give the maps another playthrough at some point to see if I can find them.

 

 

[SCF]

I played through the first batch of levels when they came out, and just finished 11-13 as well. Very fun map set, and I'm looking forward to more. It reminds me a lot of mouldy's work, but not in a derivative way. It has a similar sense of humor, creativity and architecture, but it's clearly its own thing. There's a lot of neat and memorable moments.

 

The only minor gripe I had was on map 11, the double doors between train wagons. There's a few places where I wanted to pick off enemies in the next car before rushing in, and having to deal with two doors both constantly closing in your face can be a little annoying. Especially when you're trying to fire rockets at an arch-vile.

 

Other than that I don't have much to mention. You mentioned in your post that the difficulty was "hard to evil" but I found it quite pleasant. Challenging enough to keep you on your toes (with the occasional nasty trap), but nothing that a reload and retry can't solve. And not too stingy with health, so you can recover from a few mistakes.

[nova++]

1 hour ago, SCF said:

The only minor gripe I had was on map 11, the double doors between train wagons. There's a few places where I wanted to pick off enemies in the next car before rushing in, and having to deal with two doors both constantly closing in your face can be a little annoying. Especially when you're trying to fire rockets at an arch-vile.

 

Definitely, I may simply tie them together so both doors open at once so you still get the little gap between the cars to look out at the surroundings, but don't have to fuss about with two doors.

[nova++]

18 hours ago, Fernito said:

Again, I didn't find any secret. I'll give the maps another playthrough at some point to see if I can find them.

 

You actually did. You got to the megaarmor in a way I didn't think was doable and skipped the secret sector. oops...

[Fernito]

On 9/8/2022 at 2:26 PM, nova++ said:

 

You actually did. You got to the megaarmor in a way I didn't think was doable and skipped the secret sector. oops...

 

Oopsie.

 

BTW, FDA of map11

Spoiler

This level is so much fun, I loved it! While the "train level" concept isn't new, there are some interesting twists in this map, like the having a different route going back by making you jump onto trains in the other tracks, or the car chase section. It was pretty cool, I really enjoyed it :) 

 

 

 

[Fernito]

FDA MAP12:

Spoiler

Another great, "comfortably challenging" map. 

 

 

[nova++]

I'll have to remember to fix that jump near the end, I must have adjusted that pillar for aesthetic reasons and forgot about how important it is for the jump

[Darsycho]

Just beaten this, really rad stuff, pretty tough but for the most part i did not get bored, I did get lost several times in map08 though not knowing what certain switches did, but aside from that, wasn't bored at all. awesome stuff mate.

Edited September 15, 2022 by Darsycho

[nova++]

Belated apprecation to Fernito for having the passion to give me a +1 on the frezeakin cacowards thread 😭

 

[Fernito]

3 hours ago, nova++ said:

Belated apprecation to Fernito for having the passion to give me a +1 on the frezeakin cacowards thread 😭

Aw <3 Totally deserved man, the mapset is just so creative and fun! I still owe you the demo for MAP13, it'll come asap :)

Edited September 18, 2022 by Fernito

[nova++]

Took a little time to do some more detailing and refinement on MAP11. Just was not happy with the state it was in with the base v0.4 release, it's likely I'll put up a 0.4a patch in the coming days or weeks with such things before getting to the next batch of... five maps, cause the secret levels will be involved too. Thankfully MAP31 I plan on being more of a scenic artsy fartsy map than anything that needs balancing, then MAP32 will be the "real" secret level.

 

But here's a picture of some goop dripping into a bucket:

[nova++]

Been spending a while working on other things... should be getting back to it soon though. My windows dual-boot kind of crapped itself awhile ago too (no data loss, that's all on my NAS) and I've been kinda dragging my feet on setting up something else again cause dual booting is annoying... instead I've revived a super-broken laptop and am going to just switch my display/mouse/keyboard over to it when I want to use it (or remote desktop if I don't mind the latency/compression, although doom builder hates it).

 

In lieu of new map screenshots, have a pictured of the tortured device that will make the rest of them:

 

 

I guess I didn't need to cut the chassis in half. But it's so much more compact now!

[nova++]

About time to ACTUALLY get back into the swing of things... my focus has just been in other places, but I'm feeling the itch again. I dunno when I'll use it, probably not until later, but I had the spark in me to make one of many billboards I plan on doing, so here's a preview. I was going for an free-for-all graphic design aesthetic of "Chaotic evangelical billboard seen on the side of a highway in indiana" and I think I'm in that ballpark. Later I'll give it some grime and wear blah blah blah...

 

 

[nova++]

Ok I FINALLY got that hackjob laptop set up in a place I can actually use it semi regularly, I just need to go through and install all the tools and stuff tomorrow, recover my configs, etc, and I can actually start mapping again.

[nova++]

I am building things out of order again, starting with MAP17 this time around. I would say it's around 1/3 to 1/2 done, I am reluctant to show too much because it's really uniquely and strangely themed even by my standards,but this has made it really hard to find an appropriate music track for it which has been very demotivating because the soundtrack is so important to the feel of everything I have been making and it's just not the same when I can't find one that works right. Maybe I should commission something. I don't think I have it in me to compose something myself.

 

 

edit: have a picture anyway, this one is suitably vague and concerning enough to pique the target audience's interest

Edited December 3, 2022 by nova++

[nova++]

👀

 

[nova++]

Against the odds, I have been mentioned (at the very end smushed into a corner with a bunch of other stuff) in the 2022 cacowards awwww yeeaahhh!!

 

[nova++]

MAP17 reached the milestone of being playable start to finish today - the main question marks remaining are primarily ammo placement, and then visual tweaks/variety. Plenty to do in the latter case, this one is DENSE. Need to build out variety in everything from spider webs to cyberwalls to assembling the imp shooting gallery

 

 

Lots to do... and still four more maps for this round

Edited December 11, 2022 by nova++

[nova++]

It's been much too long, but HAPPENING is happening. HUD and status bar face!

 

 

SquenchGuy, weary (but absolutely ripped) office worker, thrust into a world that to some extent he knew existed, but the depth and madness of which he could have never imagined.

 

If I was feeling really mean, I could make the screen go all scratchy and bloody when his glasses get dirty. But I won't.

 

 

The invuln face is my favorite. So I'm keeping it a secret for now...

 

Mapping will happen again soon! I swear this time!

Edited May 13, 2023 by nova++

[nova++]

Re-testing some of the maps as it's been a while since I went through them, annoyingly it looks like GZDoom has issues with texture scrollers on the software renderer. Long story short when the total offset hits 32768 it freezes the scrolling, which, in the case of MAP11's fast scrollers, takes around 36 seconds. I've tested this in isolation as well and it's not just a quirk of that map... so consider that a known issue, and something that will have to be fixed on the engine's end, unfortunately.

 

(I'll edit this post if anything else crops up in my playthrough)

 

Edit #1: I don't like MAP04. I just don't. Okay, I don't hate it, but it's just not up to the same standards as the other ones, a lot of stuff just feels off about it. I think I am going to completely rework it in the near future, I will keep the setpiece stuff that I like, but the gameplay flow needs a complete overhaul. So it goes, I guess. I want to make more use of the undersea setting anyway, and I have some ideas for areas that would be pretty neat I think.

 

Edit #2: I don't know if this applies to the release version, but a switch in MAP11 is straight up broken...whoops. I already know why at least.

Edited May 16, 2023 by nova++

[nova++]

MAPPENING is happening. I started playing with some ideas for map04 to get a feel for things again. I want to really make use of the undersea environment as mentioned, and I really like the idea of having these big tunnels of glass (it's ok, they're super strong bullet/plasma/rocket proof glass)

 

[nova++]

It is ALMOST that TIME again. Other projects and interests have been taking up my attention for a long time, but I am gearing up to properly get back into this again as those start to wrap up. I think I want to make the next release just the new HUD and the revised MAP04 before I go further with any of the new maps. I replayed MAP01 for the first time in months today and it just felt a bit... I dunno. It doesn't grab me as much as the later stuff does - the fact it was the first one made for the project does show. Perhaps revisions to that are coming in the future too. We'll see.

 

I admit I had hoped to bring all this to proper fruition much sooner but so it goes. Doom isn't going anywhere.

[nova++]

Okay, I am OFFICIALLY back at it - I've got my editing setup ready to go again and am doing checkout stuff for it. I've got a laundry list of tweaks I want to make to MAP01 in particular as part of getting back into things. I already discovered at least my current version won't launch with DSDA-Doom and probably other more strict ports due to references to textures I deleted in the ANIMATED lump - I can't remember if those textures had been deleted in the current release version, I haven't heard anyone complain yet so hey 🤷‍♂️

 

I'll try my best to end the dry spell of releases soon enough, it's been too long

[nova++]

Lots of good progress revising MAP01. I think it hits a lot more consistently and steadily now, and I shaved like 10 minutes off of the runtime, which puts it much more in line with the other big maps. There was just too much stuff going on in between, too many monsters between the important areas, and it slowed things down. I think it's much more fun to play now.

 

Also, I eliminated the old timer system in the final area because it was too obscure, replacing it with switches you have to activate that are simply very difficult to get to when the area is full of monsters. In general, I have used a lot of what I've learned in the later maps to refine it, more setpiece fun and trickery, in general it's just in a much better spot.

 

 

I've also had some brainwaves for MAP04 to really take advantage of the gimmick of being an underwater base, should be fun if I can get that working.

[.ariK]

No hablo inglés así que este gif hablara por mi 🫡

[nova++]

Some pictures from the revised MAP04 so far...